Be Part of the Team – new year, new direction

In 2014 Sport Hawke’s Bay launched a
culture shift program, in partnership with the Jarrod
Cunningham Youth Sports Trust, EIT and several sporting
codes, designed to address the nature of the support
provided to sports teams from the side-lines.

Evaluation and reflection on the program showed it
successfully raised the level of awareness of the
topic.

In the fifth year of the programme, time has called
for a shift in focus to encompass a range of behaviours
revolved around sport.

Behaviour in sport has been
extensively covered in the media with research being
undertaken by a number of national sports organisations.
There is a lot more information available on other
underlying topics that influence the manifestation of
behaviour in sport - such as early specialisation and early
professionalism in sport.

“We want to influence
attitudes about youth sport to keep kids in sport,” said
Community Sport Manager, Junior Armstrong. “Data shows
that youth are dropping out of sport and their interest in
sport is declining rapidly.”

The Sport New Zealand Young
Peoples survey shows young kiwi kids aged 5-10 years like
playing sport a lot, but this interest drops off between
15-18 years – a 16% drop for boys and 17% drop for
girls.

In 2016 we surveyed over 1,700 12-13-year olds. 20%
of them said they don’t participate in more sport because
it wasn’t fun, 15% said it was because of the pressure to
win and 20% said they lacked confidence. In addition, 50% of
those surveyed said they would play more sport if they got
more playing time.

“We acknowledge that this could be
down to many factors, including longer seasons, not playing
with mates, injuries, bad experiences, too much pressure
from parents and not having fun anymore.”

It’s clear
to us that behavioural issues aren't just isolated to the
side-line anymore and this could be a big factor in such
high drop-off rates of kids in sport between 15-18 years of
age. The side-line is just one setting where unwanted
behaviour is released as a result of beliefs on sport that
already exist.

Sport Hawke’s Bay is taking the Sideline
Behaviour campaign in a new direction, focusing on more than
just behaviour on the side-line. The ‘Be Part of the
Team’ campaign, supported by Eastern and Central Community
Trust, will focus on raising awareness of adult behaviour
and attitudes towards sport as a whole. This includes
supplement use in youth sport, side-line behaviour, early
specialisation, inclusion and development of children versus
performance.

The campaign will still incorporate the 5 key
messages of the Sideline Behaviour campaign as well as
encouraging sports coaches, instructors, parents and
administrators to adopt Sport New Zealand’s good practice
principles for children and young people in sport and active
recreation.

We will be partnering with codes and schools
to support them in delivering education sessions for their
coaches, officials and parents. We will also take a train
the trainer approach in supporting sports administrators,
and partner with Drug Free Sport New Zealand, and the New
Zealand Secondary Schools Sports Council in promoting the
safe use of supplements in sport.

“We believe if we can
influence and support the mindset of parents, coaches, and
administrators to have kids at the centre of their thinking
then we can go a long way in reducing the drop-out
rate.”

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